I’ve watched episodes 07 and 08 and now I’m more confused than ever. Part of the problem is because I’m used to watching simple-minded school comedy shows and overwrought shoujo bullshit that demand little attention to be paid. This show is a big transition from those genres for me. I’ve actually watched one or two episodes twice now, but I still keep forgetting which characters are which and how they’re related. This really demonstrates the scanty limits of my attention span because there are neither very many characters thus far nor are the relationships particularly complex.

See? I can't even remember the name of this one, despite the fact that she's obviously a pretty important character

That said, the fact that I’m too feeble-minded to remember even the most prominent elements of the plot doesn’t stop me from looking forward to every episode. I mean, what the hell are these red ping pong ball things that the light-haired character is shooting at people? Is she like, turning them into zombies or something?

Zombies would actually be pretty cool. The last show with zombies that I watched was High School of the Dead, and that was less than completely satisfying. I just watched a show on the History Channel about Haitian zombies in which some self-styled “scientists” concluded that zombies are not only real, but they’re created by a very simple process of first feeding a normal person some tetrodotoxin that priests extract from a local type of fugu fish. If done properly, the person then becomes completely paralyzed, so much so that even western doctors can mistake the patient for a corpse. You then bury the person and, later, when the victim recovers, he or she will rise from the dead and be a zombie. Of course, the fact that the amount of tetrodotoxin that would kill a human, according to Wikipedia is a mere 8 micrograms, it seems rather unlikely that there will be any zombie survivors of this process knocking at my door demanding my scrumptious brains any time soon. But you can never be too careful, so I’ll still be sure to cover all my belongings, self, and home with zombie repellent.

The segments about Ringo make me hungry because she's always reminding me of the "Happy Family" dish with shrimp, chicken and beef from the Chinese restaurant here.

I liked all the new revelations recently, such as how Ringo is adopting for herself and fulfilling Momoka’s fate in her stead. The way in which these, by all counts, extremely dramatic, even sombre moments are recalled in flashback with a high degree of absurdity and even some inexplicable humour are really are out there, like the scene about remembering Momoka on Ringo’s birthday in which the mother is a kappa and the father is some kind of teddy bear. Then the house is suddenly underwater and the two get attacked by an eel that reminded me of the big scary eel in the Jolly Roger Bay stage in Super Mario 64 that I was scared of when I was younger.

This also goes to further explain her delusions about — or rather fascination with — Tabuki and “Project M”, which, in light of recent events, we’re lead to believe stands for “maternity”.

Ringo Oginome is really one of the more interesting characters in any anime in recent memory.

It was funny that what Ringo took for an invitation to a date actually had her end up going to watch the Curry Lady perform in her frilly Frenchy fairy tale story which Tabuki, of course, is profoundly moved by. Ringo’s imagination is as wild as ever. I like her imagining Curry Lady as a killer whale.

Stupid Curry Lady had to go and invite Ringo and Shouma to her frilly hoity-toity actor snob party. Poor Shouma gets ordered around by Ringo even at the party. What a cruel-hearted, malevolent, sadist of a whale she is, inviting Ringo to the party just to announce her stupid engagement in front of her. What are you trying to do, Curry Lady? Drive her to kidnap Tabuki? She’s liable to do it.

It does, by the way, look like I was correct about the Men in Black. They are up to something sneaky with those ping pong balls. Either that or the long hiatus has forced Don Draper to venture into the world of cartoons.

But the thing that really keeps me watching this show, besides the penguins, is the sheer weirdness of it all. There are very few shows in which miracle frogs are used to make love potion number 9 in a sauna.

gero gero

Then what’s up with that ending? Is Ringo no longer just your run-of-the-mill stalker but an actual rapist? That’s a pretty appealing thought, but it’s more in line with an eroge than a mainstream TV anime so I doubt things will play out like I started imagining them in my head…which is a bit unfortunate.

Apparently Himari and I have one thing in common: we’re both allergic to milk. She’s so cute.

This outfit had the unfortunate side effect of reminding me of a cow-girl character in Toppara: Zashikiwarashi no Hanashi, by which I mean the bovine variety, not the Western cattle herder variety.

I like the part where the brothers break into Ringo’s room for good and noble reasons.

Ringo is still pretty scary though.

There are limits to how far the adage "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" can be strained and still be valid

I like Ringo’s little fantasy scene at Tabuki’s doorstep.

Noooo! Don't eat the Penguin Drum!

Unfortunately she runs into his real girlfriend and the connection between her curry and her fate is made clear as her curry comes into direct conflict with the non-fatal curry Tabuki’s girlfriend made in an unmistakable attempt to ruin Ringo’s life and destroy her very much not imagined relationship with Tabuki.

SUBETE HA KEIKAKU DOORI

This episode made me very hungry. I just bought Fantasia on Blu Ray and watched some of it a few hours before watching this episode of Mawaru Penguin Drum. Perhaps for that reason I was specifically impressed by the mushrooom things in the house, which reminded me of the dancing amanitas in the movie, pictures of which I’m not brave enough to post and risk angering Disney.

There are lots of neat decorations like that in the show. That’s one of the reasons I like it so much. The environments aren’t bare and sterile like so many other programs in which the homes of the characters don’t look as though anybody really lives there.

I’m glad that I’m still enjoying this show. Sometimes I’ll look forward to a show too much and it ends up being really devastating when it doesn’t live up to my high expectations that I groundlessly built up. Some shows have a spectacular first episode that grabs my attention immediately but then promptly loses my interest on the second episode. I’m also happy that this a 24-episode series, which I didn’t realise last week. The pantsu and oppai bits are a bit distracting though and frankly, something of a surprise. They’re not showbreaking though; just a bit out of character, perhaps.

The penguins sure do suffer a lot of abuse in this show. They should form a union or something; they’re working far too hard and in such dangerous conditions that they should be entitled to better compensation for their efforts. In this episode the theme is spying. The space penguin hat tells the brothers to get the Penguin Drum from this Ringo character, so all sorts of zany mishaps occur as they pursue her in secret. The penguins get lots of screentime in this episode to showcase their blunders, which I certainly enjoyed. There’s a funny scene in which Shouma is mistaken for a chikan and has to be saved by Kanba and his radiance.
Meanwhile, the penguins engage in various cute antics, including extensive elastic deformation and being put to work as Silly Putty.

But with all the silliness aside, it’s nice how the story had such an explicitly unifying theme to it; in order to get the Penguin Drum, the brothers are basically stalking Ringo, going so far as following her into an underwear shop. She in, turn, is stalking Tabuki. This is pointed out explicitly to the viewer through dialogue, but it’s still a satisfying revelation at the end of the episode. Kind of like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm in which all the little hints dropped throughout the episode come together to cause some extravagant culmination for Larry David where everything that has been building up comes crashing down from above all at once in the form of some crushing misfortune or injustice. It’s not quite as fulfilling as all that, since, unlike a sitcom, this show does have to have plot continuity, after all, so it’s not as though the whole deal can be resolved in a single episode, but the circularity of this episode did have a similar effect on me, nonetheless.

Hello? Operator? Get me the President of Television. I have a winning combination!

I liked seeing the penguins put to work. Penguin # 3 got to hang around the apartment though and generally be lazy. That wasn’t fair.

That Ringo girl sure is creepy though. I mean, a few loose screws or not, who in the world steps out on the ledge of a tall building just to photograph of a bird nest? Who hides in the space beneath a home to listen in on her unwitting crush?

I like more or less everything about this show and I’m fairly certain that, unless I get really, really distracted, I won’t drop it. I might stall eventually, as nearly always ends up happening to me, but I’ll probably watch the entire series with minimal delay between airtime and actually watching the episode. The only thing that bothered me about this episode is that it wasn’t until now that I realised that the penguins, though much cuter and obviously more likeable, nonetheless remind me of Beelzebub from Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san. You know, he’s that annoying fly that actually eats shit.

…but there’s a very fundamental problem with such one-sided love affairs that never occurred to me before today: unless you’re in love with HAL 9000, there’s a real human voice actor somehow entangled in your sick crush.

I came to the conclusion somewhere around the end of season 1 of Arakawa Under the Bridge that I was, like, majorly in love with P-ko. I’d only seen two shows that I knew of at the time in which Chiaki Omigawa had played a prominent character, P-ko from Arakawa Under the Bridge being one of them and the other being what’s-her-face from Seitokai Yakuindomo. At that point, I didn’t see the conflict, since I don’t go for sporty-types; I mainly like klutzy-types.

But watching Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru forced me to realise a strikingly basic flaw in my thinking; how do I know whether I am in love with the klutzy characters or the voice itself? Or is it a combination of the two factors? I don’t like the idea of being in love with a voice. On the other hand, I don’t have any strong objections to being in love with a fictional character. As I said, that, at least, is perfectly normal.

In order for that to work though, I need to ignore the rather glaring coincidence that the two characters this season whose klutziness continues to prove irresistibly alluring are both played by none other than Chiaki Omigawa.

It’s troubling to think that the voice actor plays any part in this sad inequality, since for all I know, Chiaki Omigawa could be a cannibal, or even worse: not clumsy. To the viewer, she’s just a name and I don’t like the idea of being in love with a living actor.

Still, it’s hard to ignore the coincidence. Maybe she should play some unappealing class representative-type characters soon so that I can prove to myself that it’s the clumsy characters I like, not the actor(s) who play them.